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Anthropic CEO Says A.I. Industry Must "Slow the Pace"; Trump Says He's in Favor of a United Ireland; Federal Reserve Faces Dueling Pressure over Inflation and Rate Hike; Northern U.S. Towns Fight to Preserve Deep Canadian Ties; Elena Rybakina Defeats Aryna Sabalenka; New TNT Series Revisits the U.S. Capture of Saddam Hussein. Aired 7-8p ET

Aired September 12, 2026 - 19:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[19:01:09]

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN HOST: Welcome to the CNN NEWSROOM, everyone. I'm Omar Jimenez in New York.

We're going to start tonight with one of the biggest leaders in artificial intelligence urging the whole industry to slow down.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says the unbridled race among rivals is raising the risk of out-of-control technology that could lead to cyberattacks, bio terrorism or worse. Amodei wrote, quote, "It's my worry that in six to 12 months, such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet. The scale of damage would continue to increase from there if A.I. becomes more powerful without the necessary guardrails."

In an exclusive interview with Anderson Cooper, Amodei says he's calling on leaders in the industry and around the world to work together to avoid, quote, "the wrong path," end quote. Here's part of that interview.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Obviously, the reason we're talking is these headlines that have come out. Jacob Coxon, who recently resigned from Anthropic, made headlines last week saying, "The people building A.I. earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade." There's a current employee, Evan Hubinger, an alignment science lead. He agreed, saying, "We really do earnestly believe A.I. could kill all humans. I personally think it is greater than 10 percent chance within the next decade."

Do you believe, earnestly believe, that A.I. could kill all humans? And what percent chance do you think it is?

DARIO AMODEI, ANTHROPIC CEO: So, you know, I -- you know, it's funny. I agree with Jacob much more than I disagree with him, you know, and it's, you know, it's an interesting resignation because when he left, he said, you know, I think Anthropic is the most responsible player, right? I think Anthropic is the most aware of these issues. He wasn't calling out us. He was calling out the dynamic of the industry as a whole moving too fast.

Now, I -- you know, I think I already said, you know, these sort of unconditional probabilities, you know, I -- you know, I used to kind of talk in that way because it's kind of an easy way to express I think there's some chance that things go wrong. But, you know, but -- you know, but -- but it's not, it's not all that high. But again, I think it's more illuminating to think in terms of, you know, how do you decompose those probabilities?

What are the paths in which things go well? And what are the paths in which things go poorly? And so instead of saying, you know, it's a 10 percent chance, that sounds like it's a roll of the dice. I think it's much more illuminating to say, well, that forks into different paths. And if we take the right paths, then the chance of something going wrong is very low. If we take the wrong path, then the chance of something going wrong could be -- could be even higher than that.

And so let's focus on our agency and our ability to take the right paths instead of the wrong paths. And I think that the way to take the right path is for the industry to work together. Again, you know, we'll talk about the proposal that I put out today. But at the end of the day, the industry has to work together and it's harder. But to some extent, the world has to work together. If we go too slow, I still believe that the wrong people will be in charge of the technology. And you know, that again will bring the probability of things going wrong very high.

COOPER: So what you're proposing is called pacing the frontier of the A.I. industry. And you write, "We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of A.I. models. Progress will seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain." And there's three parts to this. One is embedded evaluators, part two is democratic coordination and part three is global coordination.

Sam Altman at OpenAI just endorsed the idea of embedded evaluators. Essentially, you are suggesting, I don't know, are they observers inside your company and these other A.I. companies, ideally globally, but certainly in the U.S., who would monitor it? They would have employee access. What power would they have?

[19:05:07]

AMODEI: Yes. So, so before I even get to that, I'm just -- I'm very grateful to see, you know, support for this proposal just in the first few hours of having put it out by Sam Altman, by Elon Musk, by, you know, various legislators and government officials. I think it's a positive sign about, you know, our ability to make something that looks like this plan work.

But to get to your question, yes, embedded evaluators. So there is precedent for this. If you look at how banks are regulated, right? There's all kinds of, you know, there's all kinds of rules about, you know, how banks are allowed to do their business, right? Because, you know, we don't want to have financial crises. And one of the things that are done in some cases is I think they're called supervisors in the financial industry, but they're folks who are independent of a company who are embedded in the company day to day to check their practices. And I think we can do the same thing in -- I think we can do the same thing in A.I..

COOPER: The other thing you were calling for in this three-part proposal is democratic coordination, which is essentially democracy. All the companies that are under democracies, having these evaluators, having this coordination, and probably the most important, because the argument is, well, if the U.S. companies are the only ones regulating themselves, what about, does China get ahead? You're calling for global coordination. That's obviously a lot more difficult.

AMODEI: Yes, yes. You know, in this three-step proposal, each step is more difficult than the one before. And Anthropic was kind of getting the ball rolling by committing to the first step. But we shouldn't kid ourselves that these next two steps are going to be more difficult. And we may not succeed. And so my proposal is a proposal that we should try. Now, again, from all the agreement from others that I've seen in just the first few hours of putting out the essay, that creates some optimism, but that needs to follow up with results. So, yes, pacing among -- companies in democratic countries.

Now, the -- one of the important things that I need to call for here is, you know, as we get to the pace of model releases, right? That's commercial activity. And in order for companies to coordinate directly on commercial activity, they need to do so working with the government. And so the one thing that we're asking for from government right now, right, I mean, there's also this question of what should the regulations be.

But there's something even simpler that the government can do right now, which is it can sit down in the room and -- with all the industry players and we can all talk together and the government can make sure that we're, you know, we're not doing anything nefarious from the perspective of antitrust and collusion. We're just trying to make our system safe and to work together on making the system safe. And so I think that's an important role for the government to have.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIMENEZ: And be sure to tune in to Monday's "AC360" for much more of Anderson Cooper's exclusive interview with Dario Amodei. That's at 8:00 p.m. Eastern on Monday, right here on CNN.

Now, earlier today, I spoke with Republican Representative Nathaniel Miran of Texas. He's the co-sponsor of a bipartisan bill to require that developers implement a kill switch for the most powerful A.I. systems. Here's some of our conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIMENEZ: I want to start with a little bit of what we heard from Anthropic CEO there, Dario Amodei. One, do you agree with his overall premise of pacing the frontier, that there needs to be a slowdown here?

REP. NATHANIEL MORAN (R-TX): Omar, great to be with you today to talk about this really important topic. And yes, I think Dario and many others in the industry that that understand the significance of where we're at today. I have a good grasp on the fact that if we go too fast without -- in particular, without maybe having some breaking mechanisms or some of those items he mentioned, I know he had three specific items that he's talking about doing, that's a great way to make sure that as we innovate and not stifle innovation, that we do it safely.

When we talk about slowing down, though, you know, now we're talking about who is making that decision. And I'm so glad to see that the private sector is jumping at the front of that saying they want to be the leaders and to take responsibility for making sure their models are safe. I think they understand the need to do that.

JIMENEZ: You know, one of the things he said towards the end of that snippet there was it was one of the things he asked from the government saying that if everyone can sit in a room with all the industry players, I imagine some government representatives as well, to -- for you all to make sure that they're not doing anything nefarious in his characterization from the perspective of collusion or anything like that.

[19:10:08]

Is that a process that you, your office or anyone in the -- in Congress to your knowledge has tried to start in any way with some of these tech leaders?

MORAN: Yes. I'm so glad you asked that question because just last month, a couple of weeks ago, my office and I scheduled two full days out in San Francisco to talk with leaders in the artificial intelligence world. We've actually been at the forefront of doing this for some time in Washington, D.C., but we see the intimate (INAUDIBLE) and policy. And we've got to be prudent and reasonable in this time to make sure that we're doing the policy-making the right way.

We don't want to do it out of fear. We don't want to do it out of frustration or in a very quick moment of emotion. We want to be very prudent and reasonable so that we get the policy right. But it has to be where we bridge the technology leaders with the policy leaders and have those continuing conversations. We want to be very light on the regulations in my opinion because we don't want to stifle innovation, but we can protect humans, we can protect national security interests and public safety interests while they're able to innovate.

I give the analogy all the time. If you have a brake in the vehicle, you can actually go faster in the vehicle because you can slow down and stop when you need to. Without the brake, you can't drive as fast.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIMENEZ: All right. And our thanks to Congressman Nathaniel Moran for his time.

Still to come, gas is higher, inflation is higher, mortgage rates are higher. And interest rates could be next. The latest economic data boosting the case for a Fed rate hike. We'll get into it. Plus American towns along the border with Canada facing a growing divide with their neighbors. We'll tell you how President Trump's tariffs are causing hardship for communities on both sides.

You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:16:41]

JIMENEZ: Tonight, President Donald Trump is weighing in on Irish reunification during his visit to Dublin.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, I don't want to cause any problems, but I will tell you, I'd love to see it unified. I have friends on both sides. Great people. They're Irish people. How could they be bad, right? I'd love to see it unified. I think it would be great. Yes. A great feather in everybody's cap if that happened.

Now the U.K. will have something to say about it, obviously, but I think it would be a great thing. I mean, how could it be bad?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIMENEZ: Now, look, the issue is incredibly divisive. For some background, after decades of deadly violence in Northern Ireland, the U.S. brokered a historic peace deal in the late '90s called the Good Friday Agreement, which largely ended the conflict known as the troubles. U.S. presidents have historically avoided commenting on the issue because of how sensitive it is, but President Trump met with Ireland's leaders earlier today before going to a tournament at one of his golf courses. His visit also prompting some protests in Dublin as well.

CNN correspondent Julia Benbrook has the latest from Ireland.

JULIA BENBROOK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: President Donald Trump is spending his weekend here in Ireland. This is a two-day visit, but it's not an official state visit. Instead, it serves as an example of the way that some lines get blurred during some of Trump's travel. He started with some official visits, but then he's spending the bulk of his trip in Doonbeg, where the Irish Open is taking place at one of his properties.

Now, early in the day on Saturday, he was greeted by the Irish president, Catherine Connolly. The two had a handshake. There was a lot of pomp and circumstance and then they had a kind of behind the scenes discussion, a quick little meeting, and then he went on to see the taoiseach, Micheal Martin. Now that's where we expect that a lot more of the policy discussions took place. This was a bilateral sit- down and reporters were able to come into the room.

Prior to this meeting, a White House official had told our team that some of the top areas of discussion were going to be international issues of mutual interest, including economic development and building businesses for both countries.

Take a listen to how Trump summed up the relationship between the two.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We've had some discussions on trade and various other things. We have a big relationship with Ireland and that will continue stronger than ever, but it's doing very well. The two countries do very well together. We've had a very long, but I would say it's never been as good as it is right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BENBROOK: So, again, in some ways he was just swinging through Dublin as he now is in Doonbeg, where the Irish Open is taking place. We know this is a president who loves golf. He often spends his weekends in Bedminster or in West Palm Beach playing himself. But this trip, it really comes with some big issues looming over it, including the ongoing conflict in Iran, which has now stretched into its six month.

Poll after poll shows that Americans are not happy with the way that Trump has handled that conflict so far. And the midterms are just weeks away now. In fact, he just participated in the first of its kind midterm convention in Dallas, where Republicans looked to engage voters ahead of those crucial elections.

[19:20:09]

Reporting in Dublin, Julia Benbrook, CNN.

JIMENEZ: All right. Julia Benbrook, appreciate the reporting.

Meanwhile, here in the United States, President Trump is facing questions about the economic impact of the war with Iran on his weekend trip to Ireland. And with the midterms less than two months away, energy prices are climbing even higher amid new attacks in the Middle East. Oil, for example, now trading at more than $104 a barrel, putting pressure on gas prices where AAA says its national average hit $4.31 a gallon today, meaning it would cost you roughly $20 more to fill up your tank compared to before the war. You've also got diesel at record levels as well.

So let's bring in Professor Justin Wolfers. He teaches public policy and economics at the University of Michigan.

Good to see you. So, Justin, look, it's an economic news hurricane right now. Let's start with diesel. Hard to overstate how key this is for the economy. It's basically the cost of moving anything. Every package delivery, every grocery item essentially gets more expensive. What are you expecting in terms of its inflationary effect?

JUSTIN WOLFERS, PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC POLICY, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN: Right. So we just got the latest inflation numbers on Friday that showed inflation was in a pretty uncomfortable spot at about 3.5 percent. And that was for August. And so we know what's happened since then, which is that energy prices have gone up about another 15 percent, maybe even 20 percent, depending on exactly when you look.

So that says prices that -- and the thing is, the movement from developments in the Middle East to the pump is very, very rapid. So you're probably already seeing those higher gas prices. That in turn means that inflation is very likely to be, again, higher next month, which of course also is yet another reason why there's more pressure on Kevin Warsh and the Fed to raise rates because we're a little less optimistic today that inflation is under control.

JIMENEZ: So let's talk about that. Because normally if inflation starts rearing up, the central bank fights back, hike interest rates. But President Trump has expressly called for lower interest rates. He's been doing that for a while now. So how does that play out next week at the Federal Reserve's meeting on interest rates? Are the chances higher now than they ever have been for rates to rise here?

WOLFERS: Yes. So I checked what Wall Street was betting on this. There's a market called the Federal Funds Futures. Basically folks on Wall Street can bet on what the Fed is going to do. And on Friday that was saying there's an 86 percent chance of a rate rise at the next meeting and a 90 percent chance of a rise before the midterms. Either of those I think would be deeply upsetting to President Trump.

You'll notice neither of those numbers is at 100 percent. And I think there it's -- the case for the rate rise is quite strong. The big question mark is how much is the Fed willing to do its job? Go out there and try to defeat inflation and the interest of the American people versus how much is Kevin Warsh going to be sort of following orders from HQ. He's only one vote on the board. He has limited influence and limited power.

But if he doesn't follow through, look for Wall Street to start asking some very hard questions about who is Kevin Warsh, what is the Fed, and who and what do they serve?

JIMENEZ: And obviously the other portion of this inflation starts to go up, things get more expensive. But I wonder when you look at the record levels of diesel right now, for example, how do consumers start to see this? Is it higher produce prices, companies having to make decisions over shipping? How does that actually express itself on the consumer economy?

WOLFERS: Yes. So it's not just diesel. It's all of the, you know, it's fuel generally. So diesel is one part of it. Heating oil is another. Jet fuel is another. And already if you booked a plane ticket lately, you would have seen that flights are right up. So that's the first. Think of it as throwing a stone into a pond. The first ripple is what you see at the pump. The second ripple is that airline prices rise.

The third and fourth and fifth ripples are when diesel goes up, then it becomes more expensive for the local supermarket. If they think it's just going to be a temporary rise in oil prices, maybe they're not going to bother changing their prices. But the more that things drag on, the more that this moves from a four to six-week war into, well, we're already at the sixth month with no end in sight. Businesses are starting to see this as a sustained rise in their

costs. And so they're going to just slowly start to pass that on, which is very much the same as the script we saw with tariffs as well.

JIMENEZ: So that's one aspect of things. Let's also talk about housing because mortgage rates are already nearing 7 percent. Also even to tie into the previous, you know, if you've got a house and you're trying to heat it, , getting into these colder months, that also might get more expensive as well. But with those mortgage rates in particular, how is that affected and caught up in all of this?

[19:25:05]

WOLFERS: Right. So in some sense, it's a different story, or at least it comes under a different heading, and in some sense they're related. The different story is that's what we call the bond market. And you might say, what's a bond market? It's basically where loans get made. And like any market, if more people want loans, the price of loans that we call the interest rate that goes up.

Right now, you might say, who's all the extra people that want loans? It's the U.S. government, and our government debt right now is enormous. Our deficit is the largest it's been outside of a war or recession in the entire post-war period. The president has just made promises that would blow it out even further. And there appears to be no appetite whatsoever for reducing the amount of borrowing the U.S. government is doing.

So it's borrowing more. As a result it's crowding you and I out. And that's why mortgage rates for folks at home are going up.

JIMENEZ: Justin Wolfers, last time I had you on, I think you swallowed a bug or something. So glad to see that all good this time. All good. Appreciate the insight as always.

WOLFERS: So far.

JIMENEZ: Yes. So far. Yes. Segment is over. You made it. Good to see you. Still ahead -- yes.

Still ahead, the tariff war between the U.S. and Canada causing a growing divide among the two countries. So how do American cities and towns that have long relied on Canada make it through this? The mayor from one of those cities joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:30:51]

JIMENEZ: Along America's northern border, there are towns fighting to preserve their long-standing friendships and business ties with the Canadian people, but those bonds are being sorely tested as President Trump clashes with Canada in an escalating trade war, and for many of these towns, trade and tourism with their Canadian neighbors are critical to their economies, jobs and housing. The mayor of one of those towns, Rick Ufford-Chase of Newport, Vermont, joins us now. Really appreciate you taking the time. Just let's start with how have you seen the trade war affect your town economically? A town already, as I understand, in a long struggle to revive its Main Street and local prospects.

MAYOR RICHARD UFFORD-CHASE, NEWPORT, VERMONT: Thanks for having me, Omar, and thanks for the question.

I should probably just set context a little bit. We are a small city in the very northern part of Vermont, in an area called the Northeast Kingdom, by the folks who live here, because it is such an isolated region. It is an area that I would describe as absolutely incredibly beautiful, also economically struggling, and you're right, we've been spending a lot of time trying to bring this city back and working on an agenda for how we set ourselves up for the next hundred years in that direction.

We are located on the southern edge of a 27-mile lake that stretches 20 miles into Canada. We are only four miles from the border with Quebec and those relationships have been historically extremely important.

Families cross this border. We have friendships. We are really neighbors. And the relationships are socially connecting.

So what is the impact? You know, the biggest impact really happens in two ways for us we are finding. The first is that -- well, three, one is the social connections are much harder to maintain when folks from Canada just aren't able or willing to come to us and we understand and appreciate why they wouldn't be.

The second that has a direct economic impact on our community is that the state of Vermont has done a study that says that as of July 2025, with the first round of tariff threats, our Canadian visitors spent 30 percent -- actually almost 50 percent less than they had spent as of July 2024. When we looked at it in July 26th, just a few months ago, the numbers were beginning to creep back. We were now under 40 percent of a drop off since 2024.

But now what we are looking at is almost everybody just says we are not coming, and it has a real impact, I will just say that I am sitting right above our anchor business on Main Street, a natural food store, and their business is off along those lines, somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 to 35 percent. Anybody who knows retail knows that doesn't work.

JIMENEZ: And, Mayor, just give us an idea how much of your town's economy would you estimate is tied to Canada?

UFFORD-CHASE: It is hard to estimate. I can't give you a clear number about that. But what I can tell you is that our retail and restaurants are clearly dependent on those relationships, and I have a close friend who, together with his wife, own a fabulous little manufacturing facility. They manufacture high end furniture here in Downtown Newport, and they are in a real problem right now because 30 -- roughly 30 to 35 percent of their material is sourced from Quebec, and that's because it is close to us. It is easier to get things here. It is a great product, and it actually makes the product that they are creating less expensive for consumers here in the U.S.

So it has an impact on our manufacturers, a significant impact, and it absolutely impacts our retail.

JIMENEZ: You know, I want -- I was just up there near Newport. I was in an even smaller town, Derby Line, Vermont, literally right on the Canadian border and one of the things I heard from, from folks on the Canadian side of the border and on the U.S. side of the border is they weren't necessarily upset that Canada was levying retaliatory tariffs on $20 billion worth of goods because they understood based on everything that was going on.

But that dynamic with it comes the uncertainty of what comes next, what is the next chapter in the sort of trade war back and forth at the moment and I wonder for you as Mayor, what have you found to be the most difficult part about leading a town like yours?

[19:35:10]

Is it the losses that you are seeing, that your businesses are seeing, or is it the uncertainty of not really knowing what to invest or push for next?

UFFORD-CHASE: Honestly, we see this as kind of an unforced error, right? Like we have been struggling with all kinds of challenges in this community that everybody around the country is struggling with, particularly in rural areas like ours.

But this one is entirely, thoroughly unnecessary. It is a combination of bullying and disrespectful behavior that has reasonably upset our Canadian neighbors. No one here is upset with them for retaliating. In fact, I think there is a pretty grudging respect for the response from the Canadian government.

And I should say, you know, we are not in an area that is known as being a bastion of liberalism. While Vermont is a blue state, the area I am sitting in is heavily Republican, and across the board, folks are bewildered by why in the world this would be considered a good move.

JIMENEZ: Mayor Rick Ufford-Chase, I really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you for being here.

UFFORD-CHASE: Thanks so much for having me.

JIMENEZ: Of course.

All right, we are going to switch gears to some sports. Coming up next, the U.S. Open, new champion today and on Monday, she will become the newest top ranked player in women's tennis. We will talk about her top ranked status coming up. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:41:09]

JIMENEZ: A new woman has conquered the U.S. Open, and on Monday, women's tennis will have a new world number one player. Second seeded Elena Rybakina defeats reigning champion, Aryna Sabalenka to win her first U.S. Open championship and her third Grand Slam title.

The world's top two players split the first two sets before Rybakina cruised in the third and final set, six to two.

On Monday, she is going to officially replace Sabalenka as number one in the world, but we've still got some tennis going on this weekend, so let's bring in Hall of Fame tennis champion, Pam Shriver.

So Pam, let's start with what we saw today. What are your thoughts on the match tonight? Did it live up to what you were thinking going into the match?

PAM SHRIVER, HALL OF FAME TENNIS CHAMPION: It sure did. It was 50/50 going into the match. They have really produced some of the best power tennis that we've seen ever and it remained 50/50 until the last like 20 minutes of the match when Elena Rybakina finished it with her 12th ace, she was able to beat Sabalenka who was much more emotional in this match, and I think kind of spent a lot of energy up early on trying to manage the emotions.

But yes, it lived up to everything and even more so.

JIMENEZ: It is such a fun weekend, especially when you get down to the final -- in any tournament, especially a Grand Slam like this.

I want to talk about tomorrow's men's final match because you've got American, Ben Shelton facing top seeded, Alexander Zverev. Shelton could be the first American to win a Grand Slam since 2003 and others are also looking Shelton could be the first Black American to reach the final since 1972 after Arthur Ashe, and you're playing in Arthur Ashe Stadium.

But regardless of however, you are looking at this match, how difficult would it be for Shelton to actually get over that mountaintop? What are you looking at tennis wise here?

SHRIVER: Well, he has gotten over so many mountain tops just this week by beating Alcaraz in five sets at 3:33 in the morning for that tennis doing that.

JIMENEZ: Did you see that --

SHRIVER: I woke up in time for the match tiebreak. It was a crazy day. And, you know, I think what we've seen from Shelton is extraordinary maturity, especially this summer. He won a big tournament north of the border in Canada leading into the U.S. Open and he has been to the semis before here. And yes, I think he mentally is big enough to do this. He got his dad as his coach in his coaching box. Both players are coached primarily by their fathers, as Zverev has nightmare memories from six years ago when Zverev lost a U.S. open from a two sets to love up. But Shelton as you said, playing an Arthur Ashe Stadium, trying to do something that Andy Roddick hasn't done since 2003, be an American male to win a major title and to do it on one of the greatest pioneers in the history of tennis, Arthur Ashe Stadium Court. It is incredible.

But Shelton has to play it point by point and not think about the history.

JIMENEZ: Yes. History is for us to think about, the players, you've just got to go out there and play your game.

You know, speaking of spectators, influencers got some attention for breaking some match etiquette at various points over this tournament. Some say it helped bring attention to the games. And I wonder how you feel about the balance between obviously long-standing match etiquette, but also the need to continually grow the game.

SHRIVER: It is a great question. I think it is something that the sport wrestles with all the time, not so much at Wimbledon, the previous major that was just played two months ago, when it is like one of the quietest courts in the world center court, Arthur Ashe, for a long, long time, has been the loudest. Of course, they are using influencers to try and reach younger audiences for the great sport of -- the lifetime sport of tennis.

[19:45:00]

Did it go too far? Of course it did a few times. But I will tell you what, we have to try to be quiet when we watch matches on the biggest court in the world, and we will see if that message can get across. But I could tell you one thing that does happen when the tennis is off the charts, even the influencers are quiet.

JIMENEZ: Yes, I mean, there is nothing else you can do. There is no greater show, no shade to the influencers -- when the tennis is good, there is no greater show than what is happening in front of you.

Pam Shriver, appreciate the time, appreciate the insight. Thanks for being here.

SHRIVER: Thanks for having me.

JIMENEZ: All right, up next, a new sneak peek at a TNT series exploring the interrogation of Saddam Hussein. It is all based on the memoir by John Nixon, who joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:50:31]

JIMENEZ: Tomorrow night, TNT premieres its new limited series "High Value Target: The Hunt for Saddam." The political thriller is based on former CIA analyst, John Nixon, the first American officer to interrogate Saddam Hussein after his capture in 2003, and the series explores their high stakes exchanges and Nixon's search for answers about weapons of mass destruction. Here is a sneak peek. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Angela, any prior history of Hussein at this location?

ANGELA: You're the Saddam expert.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Okay, John. Elucidate.

JOHN: Yes, sir. He has been there six times that we know of. His first wife's family is close to the owners. They actually ran a business together in the late 80s.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Too much information. Just cut to the chase.

ANGELA: Well, John always likes to start at a time Before Christ. Historians.

JOHN: Well, he hasn't been there since mid-95. He is not going to show up anywhere where we expect him to be.

ANGELA: Not intending to contradict or antagonize, okay, but our asset is boots on the ground.

JOHN: Well, I've been studying Saddam for seven years.

ANGELA: Oh!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Angela, your opinion?

ANGELA: John knows Hussein better than I knew my first husband.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIMENEZ: Joining us now is John Nixon. He is the author of "Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein," the inspiration for the series.

So, John, what goes through your mind as you watch your story being dramatized on screen there?

JOHN NIXON, "DEBRIEFING THE PRESIDENT" AUTHOR: Well, it is -- it is a bit surreal because at the time we didn't videotape our sessions. And I always kind of -- years later, I always kind of wondered, wanted to go back and look at some of them again. So it is a bit surreal seeing this acting out.

But overall I was very pleased with it because a lot of the interactions between myself and Saddam, the dialogue is taken straight from my notebook and subsequently in my book, "Debriefing the President" and the producers and the director, Leslie Greif, I think have done a great job, as have the actors, particularly Joel Kinnaman and Waleed Zuaiter.

JIMENEZ: So just take us back to that day, the day you came face-to- face with Saddam Hussein for the first time. What was that like? NIXON: It was -- we knew we were very close to catching him, and we knew that it was going to probably happen that night, but once it happened, we -- I was in Baghdad, I was at a CIA station in Baghdad, and we got word that he had -- that someone had been caught and they were flying somebody down to Baghdad and that's when I was -- they had asked me to go out to identify him.

I mean, the whole time, I was thinking that maybe they've caught the wrong person or maybe like we had gone down so many dry wells before and come up with nothing. And so when, all of a sudden I am brought to this building and I walked down this hallway and I see him there, and I mean -- I just -- I caught my breath and I just -- I couldn't believe it, but the minute I laid eyes on him, I knew it was him.

JIMENEZ: Yes, yes. And as we heard in the scene, you are someone that had been studying him for years and I just wonder, what is the biggest revelation you took away from your eventual interrogations, knowing how much work you had done on the front end leading up to that moment?

NIXON: Well, there were a number of things that we -- that I took away from it, a number of things that I think overall was -- one was that even though we really did have a good picture of who Saddam Hussein was, there was a lot of detail that we had wrong and that we didn't understand and we didn't understand, I think at times the constraints that he was operating under, we didn't understand that, you know, that there were many times when he was reaching out to us and wanted to make deals with us, and we would sort of just shoo him away or not even bother to answer.

I think one of the most profound things, and I think this comes out in the limited series is just, you know, you find yourself talking to somebody and you demonize this person and you build them up in your head as this horrible, horrific figure, torturer, sadist, madman and you get to meet them face-to-face and you start talking to them and suddenly, you know, you are able to kind of understand some of the things better than not having that conversation at all, and we hadn't been talking to Saddam for years, and I think we hurt ourselves in that in that regard, because we lost our ability to have a better understanding of his regime, of who he was and how we could better, more effectively deal with him.

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JIMENEZ: Yes --

NIXON: Without having to go to war.

JIMENEZ: Well, John, it is an incredible story. I am excited to see it dramatized, but also, I guess, I should read the book too, because right in my wheelhouse, I really appreciate you taking the time tonight as well. Thank you.

NIXON: All right, thank you.

JIMENEZ: And we should also say, the first two episodes premiere tomorrow night on TNT. TNT and CNN by the way, share a parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.

Thank you all for being with me this evening. We covered a lot of news over the course of this evening. We will have some more same time tomorrow, same deal.

For now, I am Omar Jimenez.

"Real Time" with Bill Maher coming up next.

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